She was silent a moment and he had leisure to steal a closer look at her.  It was the first time since their meeting that he had really seen her face; and he was struck by the touch of awe that had come upon her beauty.  Perhaps her recent suffering had spiritualised a countenance already pure and lofty; for as he looked at her it seemed to him that she was transformed into a being beyond earthly contact, and his heart sank with the sense of her remoteness.  Presently she began to speak and his consciousness of the distance between them was increased by the composure of her manner.  All signs of confusion and distress had vanished.  She faced him with the same innocent freedom as under her father’s roof, and all that had since passed between them seemed to have slipped from her without a trace.

She began by thanking him for coming, and then at once reverted to her desperate situation and to her determination to escape.

“I am alone and friendless,” she said, “and though the length of our past acquaintance” (and here indeed she blushed) “scarce warrants such a presumption, yet I believe that in my father’s name I may appeal to you.  It may be that with the best will to help me you can discover no way of doing so, but at least I shall have the benefit of your advice.  I now see,” she added, again deeply blushing, but keeping her eyes on his, “the madness of my late attempt, and the depth of the abyss from which you rescued me.  Death were indeed preferable to such chances; but I do not mean to die while life holds out a hope of liberation.”

As she spoke there flashed on Odo the reason of her remoteness and composure.  He had come to her as a lover:  she received him as a friend.  His longing to aid her was inspired by passion:  she saw in it only the natural impulse of benevolence.  So mortifying was the discovery that he hardly followed her words.  All his thoughts were engaged in reviewing the past; and he now saw that if, as she said, their acquaintance scarce warranted her appealing to him as a friend, it still less justified his addressing her as a lover.  Only once before had he spoken to her of love, and that under circumstances which almost forbade a return to the subject, or at least compelled an added prudence in approaching it.  Once again he found himself the prisoner of his folly, and stood aghast at the ingenuity of the punishment.  To play the part she ascribed to him was his only portion; and he resolved at least to play it like a man.

With what composure he might, he assured Fulvia of his desire to serve her, and asked if she had no hope of obtaining her release from the Holy See.  She answered:  none, since enquiry must reveal that she was the daughter of a man who had been prosecuted for heresy, and that after his death she had devoted the small sum he had left her to the publication of his writings.  She added that his Holiness, resolved to counteract the effects of the late Pope’s leniency, had greatly enlarged the powers of the Inquisition, and had taken special measures to prevent those who entered the religious life from renouncing their calling.